Thursday, August 31, 2006

bloomberg.com reports on vidarbh agrarian crisis as farmers suicide in august 2006 crosses 110 mark govt. of mahrashtra admits more than 800 farmers suicides in six distrcit of vidarbha since 1 jan.2006 that's after the announcement of packages started,informed vidarbha jan andolan samiti.here is text of bloomberg news item

1.Maharashtra is one of five states to report an increase in suicides this year. More than 17,100 Indian farmers and their families died by their own hands in 2003, the latest government figures show.

``Incomes of farmers have fallen, while expenses have risen,'' said Kishor Tiwari, head of Vidarbha Jan Aandolan Samiti, a Maharashtra-based farmers' lobby group. ``You can't turn a loss-making crop into a money-earner for the family.''

< style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">2.``This is economic desperation,'' said M.S. Swaminathan, the architect of India's Green Revolution, a project in the late 1960s to import high-yielding wheat seed. ``Agriculture is becoming a gamble both in the monsoon and the market.''

3.Debt pressures have been mounting for 20 years, said Sharma of New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. Rising costs of cultivation and the reduction of tariffs on imported agricultural products are adding to rural despair, he said. Cotton farmers are among the hardest hit by the surge in suicides as crop yields remain static while costs rise. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July pledged about $1 billion over three years for the six hardest-hit cotton-growing districts of Maharashtra, where about 600 suicides have been reported since January.

By Pratik Parija

Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Rajendra Patil, a 40-year-old farmer in western India, killed himself in April by drinking pesticide, after unseasonable rains destroyed his cotton crop and left him with 50,000 rupees ($1,075) in debt he couldn't repay.

``I have no choice but to work now, even when I'm ill,'' said his wife, Rekha, 35, who lives with her two sons in a thatched hut in Sonegaon, a village in the state of Maharashtra. Patil's debt was three times his annual income.

The number of suicides among India's 235 million farmers is rising as seed and pesticide costs increase and the rural economy provides few other job opportunities. More than 18,000 farmers may kill themselves this year, the most ever recorded by the government, said Devinder Sharma, chairman of the farm lobby group Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

The deaths show the plight of India's farmers, whose destitution is overshadowed by the country's booming software and pharmaceutical industries. About 27 percent of India's rural population, or almost 200 million people, live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

``This is economic desperation,'' said M.S. Swaminathan, the architect of India's Green Revolution, a project in the late 1960s to import high-yielding wheat seed. ``Agriculture is becoming a gamble both in the monsoon and the market.''

Debt pressures have been mounting for 20 years, said Sharma of New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. Rising costs of cultivation and the reduction of tariffs on imported agricultural products are adding to rural despair, he said.

`Terrible Crisis'

``Suicides are a reflection of the terrible crisis that exists on the farm front,'' Sharma said.

The suicide rate among Indian farmers is about 7.7 per 100,000, according the Sharma's estimates.

India's suicide rate for all men is 12.2 per 100,000, less than the European Union average of 18.5, according to statistics from the World Health Organization. Latvia has the highest suicide rate in the EU at 43.9 per 100,000 men.

About 70 percent of India's 1.1 billion people live in the country's 638,000 villages, relying primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods. While India's economy expanded an average of 8.1 percent annually in the past three years -- helped by a boom in software services at Bangalore's Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. -- the growth has bypassed many farming communities.

Small Farms

Small, inefficient farms are unable to compete in global markets. India produces 473 kilograms (1,043 pounds) of cotton per hectare (2.5 acres), less than the 1,127 kilograms in China and 931 kilograms in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site.

New laws that have opened agriculture to market forces are locking farmers into a cycle of debt, Vandana Shiva, a physicist and social activist, wrote in a report.

``Corporate feudalism is leading to an epidemic of suicides,'' said Shiva, who runs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Uttaranchal state.

Cotton farmers are among the hardest hit by the surge in suicides as crop yields remain static while costs rise. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July pledged about $1 billion over three years for the six hardest-hit cotton-growing districts of Maharashtra, where about 600 suicides have been reported since January.

Five States

Maharashtra is one of five states to report an increase in suicides this year. More than 17,100 Indian farmers and their families died by their own hands in 2003, the latest government figures show.

``Incomes of farmers have fallen, while expenses have risen,'' said Kishor Tiwari, head of Vidarbha Jan Aandolan Samiti, a Maharashtra-based farmers' lobby group. ``You can't turn a loss-making crop into a money-earner for the family.''

Prices of seeds and pesticides in India have surged 30 percent since 2001, said K.K. Milmile, who has sold farm supplies at Maharashtra's Agro Service Centre for 30 years.

By contrast, the Agriculture Ministry has raised its minimum guaranteed price for rice 17 percent since 2001. Wheat has been raised 13 percent and cotton 5.7 percent.

Nine Reasons

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar listed nine reasons for the deaths in a May speech to Parliament. They included natural calamities, uncertain monsoons and population pressure on land. Radha Singh, India's agriculture secretary, didn't respond to faxed questions on the rising number of suicides.

Genetically modified seeds also are pushing costs beyond farmers' means, said Biotechnology Forum's Sharma. The seeds don't regenerate, preventing farmers from using a part of their harvest to sow the following year's crop -- a practice they have followed for centuries.

The company charges 880 rupees per 450 grams (1 pound) in India. In China, it charges the equivalent of 100 rupees for the same seeds, said a spokesman at Monsanto's China unit, who gave only his family name, Meng.

Monsanto has appealed the commission ruling in India's Supreme Court, according to the Business Standard newspaper. Monsanto spokeswoman Camille Gonsalves in Mumbai declined to comment on the case. The company's fiscal third-quarter net income soared sevenfold to $334 million.

Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, cotton farmer Chandrabhan Gurnule burned himself to death over a 105,000-rupee debt. Dasru Goma, 50, a cotton and lentil farmer, hanged himself over the 33,998 rupees he owed. And Rajendra Patil's widow, Rekha, said she's struggling to make ends meet.